Resources

Researchers at UCL, in collaboration with the Helen Bamber Foundation, developed and piloted a clinical skills training programme to support lawyers in navigating conversations about trauma. The training consisted of a two-hour session delivered on four occasions, attended by 33 lawyers from six law firms. Interviews and questionnaires explored its feasibility, acceptability and impact on lawyers’ confidence and capacity to promote resilience and self-care.

In this study, researchers at UCL and the Helen Bamber Foundation, conducted interviews with seven adults affected by statelessness. Participants varied in their country of origin, circumstances of statelessness and current UK immigration status. These were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA), which examined how individuals make sense of their experiences in detail.

This study, conducted by academics at Birkbeck, University of London and co-authored by Cornelius Katona (Helen Bamber Foundations’ Honorary Director of Medical and Research) involved semi-structured interviews with six UK-based therapists about their experiences of working with people seeking asylum and refugees, in particular those from Ethiopia or Eritrea. It calls for a rethinking of a therapeutic approach that considers people within the context of the systemic issues they face.

This editorial is a collaboration between Helen Bamber Foundation, Freedom from Torture, leaders with lived-experience, lawyers and academics from King's College London, Northumbria University and Brunel University London. It examines the mental health implications of the legislation and policy changes introduced by the UK Labour government in 2025.

This study finds that immigration detention has negative mental health consequences across a variety of immigration detention facilities and detainee characteristics. Recommendations based on findings are presented, including eliminating child detention, imposing upper limits to the duration of adult detention, improving mental health screening pre-detention, and providing evidence-based psychological care during detention.

In a new editorial, Professor Cornelius Katona (Honorary Director of Medical and Research at the Helen Bamber Foundation) and colleagues raise two vital questions: Can a GP have sufficient expertise to give an opinion in the context of post-traumatic stress disorder and specifically on the impact of detention? And, can a doctor working for a charity be independent, objective, and impartial?

A new research study explores the impact of short-term grants of leave on former unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Conducted by University College London, Helen Bamber Foundation and Baobab Centre for Young Survivors in Exile, this research is the first to document the lived experience of receiving temporary status in the UK.

Within the Helen Bamber Foundation research department, we have been working on an exciting, fully co-produced research project. Co-produced research is when both researchers with lived experience of the research topic and researchers with more “traditional” academic experience work together as team members on a project, with the aim of integrating and equally valuing both forms of knowledge.

The Helen Bamber Foundation collaborated with University College London to do a first-of-its-kind UK study, gathering firsthand accounts from human trafficking survivors about their experiences with oath-taking and how their relationship to the oath evolved over time.

Academics from Kings College London and University College London, in collaboration with Helen Bamber Foundation, conducted a systematic review of the quantitative evidence about how young refugees and asylum seekers are accessing mental health services globally to better understand this disparity.

We conducted a study in collaboration with University College London to better understand how trust amongst survivors of human trafficking has been shaped by their experiences before, during and after trafficking. This study focuses on the lived ‘trust journeys’ of human trafficking survivors and includes interviews with 10 survivors of trafficking.

We conducted a small preliminary internal enquiry and spoke to 14 clients about their perspectives of research in general, experiences of research at the Helen Bamber Foundation, barriers to participation, and whether, or how they wanted to be more involved in the research. From this we shared our reflections on best-practice and a list of recommendations for engaging with survivors of trauma and human rights abuses in research.